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ITN Source
AUSTRALIA: Two of the world's oldest Kodiak Bears celebrate their birthday at the Sydney zoo
AUSTRALIA: Two of the world's oldest Kodiak Bears celebrate their birthday at the Sydney zoo
Kodiak bears Cynthia and Bethel turn 30 and have a special birthday breakfast at the Sydney zoo. Two sister bears celebrated their birthday at a Sydney zoo on Wednesday (January 17), receiving a special birthday treat for reaching the ripe old age of 30. Bethel and Cynthia celebrated the day with a breakfast of large Atlantic salmon. In the wild, Kodiak Bears can live between 15 to 30 years. The bears mainly live in forests, valleys and grassland, and are omnivores but they are also the largest living land carnivores. Their handlers said the bears are gentle. "They are old women now. Basically they have calmed down from the days I very first met them," said Louise Ginman, a senior carnivore keeper at Taronga Zoo, which has been the bears' home for more than 10 years. "When they were younger, they would occasionally be very impatient with us and forcefully ask for their food. Now they are gentle old ladies. They are wonderful old bears to work with, they hand-feed from us really nicely. So, now they are a real pleasure to work with," Ginman added. Although the two are considered gentle, the zoo said the bears have an outstanding sense of smell and poor eyesight and probably cannot distinguish humans from sub-adult bears. Cynthia and Bethel arrived Sydney in 1985 from Adelaide and were born in Colorado Springs, U.S. in 1977. Found only on the Kodiak Archipelago near Alaska, the Kodiak Bear is named as a unique subspecies of the brown bear. When they stand on their hind legs they can be more than three metre's tall and weigh approximately 780 kilograms. It is estimated that there are 3,500 Kodiak Bears in the wild.
ITN Source | January 19, 2007
